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Wednesday, May 25, 2016

Camel: Rajaz

Rajaz is an Arabic poetry meter that has
traditionally been associated with the slow, regular pace of camel hooves
across the desert — meaning that, all of a sudden, Latimer must have woken up
from a prolonged dreaming period and thought, «Hey! Last time we actually
justified the band's name was on the album cover for Mirage! Why do I keep calling this outfit Camel if all I do is sing about the Berlin Wall, the Dust Bowl, and
Irish immigration?» And there you have it — after years, if not decades, of
detours, Rajaz is a conscious
attempt to (a) explain why the band
was originally named Camel after all and (b) get back to its (Camel's) original
roots, or at least pro­vide some reasonable facsimile.

Of course, this is not really a nostalgic revisit of the styles and sounds of Mirage or any of those early records. Once
the initial positive reaction of the «wow! finally
something different and attention-grabbing!» is over, you begin to realize that
this is still very much a solo Latimer album, and that he is still relying on
the same chords and moods, and that Ton Scherpenzeel is back on keyboards, and
that Latimer's wife is still writing the lyrics, and that the best tracks are
all grouped in the record's first half, and that it still tends to slip back
into moody, draggy, Harbour Of Tears-like
inoffensiveness every now and then, and...

...and none of it really matters when the album
opens with ʽThree Wishesʼ, a multi-part instru­mental that employs complex and
frequent tempo changes, for once, and even incorporates ele­ments of jazz
fusion — first time in how many years? Even the keyboards, which had been
Camel's weakest link ever since Bardens' departure, have been diversified, with
Scherpenzeel using a whole array of organs and synthesizers instead of
stubbornly sticking to the plastic string-imitating tones of yesterday. The
track has a nice buildup, gradually evolving from a desert-like atmosphere of
solitary blueswailing lines over a dusty synth horizon to a pretty art-pop
gallop through said desert and then to bits of tricky jazzy time signatures
and, eventually, even a mysti­cally-magically distorted pseudo-Eastern guitar
solo which is probably the closest Latimer ever came close to sounding like
Steve Vai in his entire career.

That is just to give you the general idea that
things are on the move — like I said, do not expect too much change, but expect just enough to feel a new surge of life
after the seemingly endless rut of the past fifteen years. When the vocals enter
the picture on ʽLost And Foundʼ, the impres­sion is disappointing — the same
kind of tender hookless ballad that we already know so well — but once they go
away, it's back to jerky-jazzy signatures and tonal diversity, with no less
than three different approaches to guitar soloing, the last of which, heavy on
sustained notes, seems to be taking a serious (and efficient) lesson from
Robert Fripp. More stellar guitar work awaits on ʽThe Final Encoreʼ, and then,
of course, there is the title track — yes, the one allegedly composed «on the
camel meter», and while it does not exactly conjure visions of camels all by
itself (pro­bably because it shows no Eastern influence whatsoever in the
melody), it's still a good example of «sick and tired blues», culminating in a
drawn-out slide solo that helps make the accompany­ing four-note «camel riff»
even more hypnotic.

As we get to the second half, things begin to
get less and less exciting, with more languid ballad­ry like ʽStraight To My
Heartʼ and fewer of these exciting jazzy interludes. Still, ʽSaharaʼ is largely
similar in structure to ʽThree Wishesʼ (same mish-mash of New Agey ambience,
happy art-pop, and Eastern overtones), and if only the grand finale of
ʽLawrenceʼ weren't so stretched out — Andy, come back to your senses, you're no
David Lean! — it would have made for a more convincing conceptual conclusion;
but it's a little too slow, too repetitive, and too scarce on ideas that
weren't already musicalized on the first three tracks. In other words, sixty
minutes of music is overkill: by all means, Latimer should have restricted
himself to the usual running length of the LP era. We know he's a first-rate guitar player already.

Still, there is no denying it: Rajaz is the best Camel record since Nude,
and although I am sure it could have been even better (if, for instance,
Latimer had bothered bringing in a more refined keyboard player, or if he'd
made it completely instrumental), it's one of those reassuring moments when you
know that you have not waited around for nothing — the moment when cobwebs are
shaken off, the sleeping giant awakens (or at least bats an eye), and suddenly
you distinctly re­member why you used to single out the band in the first
place. A definite thumbs up.

1 comment:

Yes, this is definitely a very strong album, although a bit monotonous. But there are enough good melodies and guitar playing to make me return to it time after time. The next one is even better, though, imho.